Memo Pad: Tonchi Hires Jody Quon at W… Adoring Iman…

Jody Quon and Lynn Hirschberg head to W magazine. Also, Marc Jacobs lands on this year’s Time 100 list.

ON TONCHI’S TEAM: In his biggest hire to date, W magazine editor in chief Stefano Tonchi has tapped Jody Quon as creative director. This confirms a report by WWD on April 23. Quon comes to W from New York magazine, where she had been photo director since 2004. Prior to New York, Quon worked in the photo department at The New York Times Magazine for more than a decade, most recently as deputy photo editor.

“Jody has a background that goes beyond just beauty and fashion — she knows photojournalism, she knows images,” said Tonchi. “She is open to not just traditional fashion photography.

“I’ve been a big fan of her work in New York magazine, her use of talent and her imagination,” he continued. “I see her as somebody who cares as much about the cover of a magazine as the last page of a magazine, somebody who gives as much attention to the well features as to the little things that happen in front of the book.”

Tonchi also said his pick of Quon “confirms, a little bit, the direction” in which he plans to take W, mainly “moving to a more lifestyle approach to fashion — a lifestyle magazine, and not just a women’s fashion magazine.

“I think T magazine is a bit of a blueprint of what I want to do,” he noted.

As for when readers can expect to see all the changes reflected in W’s pages, Tonchi said, “We are planning to have, as we say, one year of first issues, so September will be the first issue where some of the new content and point of view will start to show, but we count on delivering something more every month.”

Quon’s last day at New York will be May 14, and she will start at W on May 24. A spokeswoman for New York magazine said editor in chief Adam Moss has not yet named a successor.

Meanwhile, a Condé Nast spokeswoman confirmed Lynn Hirschberg, formerly editor at large of T and the Times’ Sunday Magazine, is indeed making the move to W. She will serve as contributing editor at large, beginning May 3. — Nick Axelrod

WHERE HAVE ALL THE OTHERS GONE?: No Ralph, no Karl, no Giorgio — Marc Jacobs is the only fashion designer to land on this year’s Time 100 list and his friend Victoria Beckham got to interview him for the issue, which hits newsstands Thursday. “He inspires and educates me every time we meet,” Beckham writes. “He ­changes how we see fashion with each collection he shows, be it his work for Louis Vuitton or his own baby, the Marc Jacobs line, which he started in 1986.”

But while Jacobs was the only designer to actually be on the list, there are still some famous fashion names represented otherwise. Tom Ford didn’t make the list, but he profiled model Liya Kebede, who did. “I first met Liya Kebede about 10 years ago in Paris,” Ford writes. “I was casting models for a show, and Liya came in. She looked me in the eyes, and I was quite literally stunned.” And, in what might appear an odd pairing, Jet Li was interviewed by Donatella Versace. “The first time my friend Jet Li and I talked about his One Foundation, which he began to assist with disaster-relief efforts in China and beyond,” Versace writes, “he was so passionate that I felt the only thing for me to do was to help.” The two subsequently linked up to raise funds for victims of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008.

Meanwhile, Donna Karan interviewed architect Zaha Hadid, who also made the list. “Zaha’s work evokes that passion,” says Karan. “Her buildings are like a gust of wind — organic, forceful and utterly natural. Her oeuvre is diverse: she has done structures from the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany, to the Terminus Hoenheim-Nord in Strasbourg, France, to the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio.”

The Time 100 Gala will be held May 4 at Jazz at Lincoln Center and Sarah Palin, Martha Stewart, Versace, Harvey Weinstein and Kathryn Bigelow are among those expected to attend. — Amy Wicks

MODEL DISPLAY:Iman, who is receiving the Fashion Icon Award at this year’s CFDA Fashion Awards, will get a special gift for the occasion — her own Barneys New York windows. To mark the award, Barneys creative director Simon Doonan is dedicating two of the store’s Madison Avenue windows to the model and, this being Doonan, there will be no shortage of fantasy. One window will be plastered with collages and decoupages of images of the model and feature Iman’s name spelled out in “Ben Hur lettering,” Doonan said, while the other window will display a Bruce Weber portrait of Iman with quotes about her from notables — both living and dead — from RuPaul (“Iman is the woman who first inspired the phrase ‘You Betta Work’”) to Diana Vreeland (“Now that’s a neck!”) and David Bowie (“Iman is my wife!”).

Doonan first met the model in the mid-Eighties on an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot for Vanity Fair that commemorated the Statue of Liberty. “She had to hold all these sparklers, and the smoke that came off those things was very acrid and horrible,” Doonan recalled of Iman, who was wearing a Willi Smith outfit in the picture. “She just stood there, looking flawless. I thought, ‘I don’t know how she is breathing but she is astounding.’ I was absolutely terrified of her because she is so regal and beautiful but the minute we got off the set, we bonded wildly. We’re both immigrants; she just happens to be twice my height.”

The windows will be installed on May 11 and will stay up for three weeks. — Marc Karimzadeh

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